Sanhedrin Nursery – Garden Blog

• Bare root fruit trees, grape and berry vines, and ornamental trees and shrubs are still available and ready to plant.

• Roses should be pruned if you haven’t done so already. Remove all old leaves on and around the bushes and spray with Neem oil to prevent early pest and disease problems.

• Plant peas in well-drained soil for a spring crop. Protect from birds with bird netting or lightweight row cover.

• Spring vegetables can be planted now from nursery starts. Begin your garden with broccoli, cabbage, lettuce, spinach, chard and onions. It pays to grow your own!

• Deciduous Clematis vines can be cut back to about waist height, to encourage bushiness, more flowers and a nicer looking vine. Do this now before the new growth starts.

The Raspberry Patch

The delicate unique flavor of raspberries make them a favorite with fruit lovers. Growing a raspberry patch in your yard is easy. There is very little maintenance and you are rewarded with succulent berries year after year. By planting different varieties that bear at different times, you can have a steady supply of fresh raspberries all summer long.

Raspberries can be divided into two groups based on the season in which they produce fruit. Everbearing varieties produce fruit in the summer as well as the fall, while summer-bearing varieties only produce fruit in the summer. Raspberry plants can also be divided into categories by color: red, yellow, purple and black.

Summer-bearing red raspberries include Willamette, which is the earliest to bear with dark red fruit and a rich and slightly tart flavor. Canby also bears in the summer with light red fruit that are medium to large, firm, sweet and excellent for fresh use and processing.

Everbearing raspberries include Amity, Heritage and Bababerry. Amity has large, firm, dark red berries with classic raspberry flavor and superior quality, and almost no spines. Heritage is the traditional standard for fall fruiting raspberries. It has large, sweet, dark red berries with a mild flavor. These berries are superb for freezing and delicious for table use. Bababerry has large, soft red berries up to 1-inch, and is highly regarded for flavor. It is an excellent producer, and tolerates summer heat better than other raspberries.

Yellow raspberries are less common than the other two types but produce berries that are just as sweet and large. Most yellow raspberries are fall-ripening including Fall Gold, which ripens 10 days before the Heritage fall crop. Its fruit is medium-sized, yellow with a pink blush, soft, but with extremely sweet golden berries that are excellent for eating fresh or processing.

Purple raspberries are cultivars with both red and black raspberries in their genetics which produce uniquely flavored fruit. They are extremely vigorous and often show added disease and insect resistance. As the fruit ripens it changes color from red to purple. Royalty has a large, reddish-purple berry with soft, but sweet, flavor. It is a favorite for making jams and adding to pies.

Black raspberries, or Black Caps, produce fruit on arched or trailing canes. New canes are not produced from old roots; instead, they develop from the base of old canes. Black raspberries are preferred by chefs because the fruit tends to be sweeter. Munger is a small, blue-black berry with good flavor that ripens in July.

Raspberries need well-drained soil that is somewhat acidic and at least 6 to 8 hours of sun a day. Plant vines 2-3 feet apart in rows 4-6 feet apart, and construct a simple trellis system to keep the vines upright for easy harvesting. A summer mulch will help keep the area weed-free, retain moisture and keep the soil cooler.

Prune summer red raspberries after harvest by removing the canes that bore fruit. Fall-ripening varieties bear on new canes that grow in the summer. After fruiting, either cut these canes to the ground, or remove the portion that fruited and leave the lower canes to produce next spring.

Once everything is in place, your raspberry patch will provide you with many years of savory satisfaction.

• It’s bare root season, which means you can save money on fruit trees by planting them now. A wide selection is still available.

• Start an asparagus bed so you can enjoy their young, tender shoots straight from the garden.

• Artichokes can be planted now from dormant roots. By next spring, you’ll be harvesting your own delicious buds.

• Plant strawberry plants now for delicious strawberry shortcake this summer.

• Pansies will brighten your flower beds with their happy faces. They will bloom all through the spring.

Great Pears for the Home Orchard

Pear trees produce generous crops of delicious fruit and make handsome landscape trees with their glossy leaves and white blossoms. They are long-lived trees and are one of the easiest fruits to grow in this area.

There are many tasty varieties to choose from that will give you fresh fruit over a long season. Bartlett is the earliest pear in this area. It is the thin-skinned yellow fruit familiar in the market in late summer. Perfect for canning, and excellent for drying, they are sweet and juicy and delicious for fresh eating.

Ripening a week or two after Bartlett is the Magness pear. This soft, sweet, juicy dessert pear is almost free of grit cells. The greenish-yellow fruit develops a red or russeted blush. Magness is very disease resistant, especially to fireblight. It does require a pollinator.

Similar to the Magness is the Warren pear. It is an excellent quality dessert pear that has no grit cells and a superb, buttery flavor. It is self-fruitful and a good keeper.

The smallest of the commonly grown pears, Seckel is also the sweetest. So small that they can be canned whole, they are also delicious fresh. Seckel pears are a sweet and delicious treat!

Midseason pears mature in September and October. D’Anjou is a large, green pear that is firm but not especially juicy. Sweet and mild-flavored, it makes delicious pear pies and is an excellent keeper. Red Anjou pears are nearly identical to the original D’Anjou with the exception of its deep maroon color. Bosc has a long, narrow shape with skin that is heavily russeted. The flesh is crisp and fragrant with a distinct flavor. Baked or poached, it is one of the best.

Late season pears ripen from October into November. Comice pears, green and often with a red blush, are the favorite of many for eating fresh and as a dessert pear. They are too juicy for cooking, but the very best for fresh eating, and are a favorite in holiday gift boxes. They are very soft when ripe and creamy in texture. Winter Nelis is the latest pear. It is quite small with yellow-green skin, but has a juicy, sweet, rich flavor. It is very good eaten fresh and also fine for baking.

Pears need pollination to bear a good crop. Plant two or more different trees within 100 feet of each other and they will all bear more fruit than if planted alone. If you only have room for one tree, plant one grafted with three or four varieties, or do your own grafting. Most varieties will start to bear significant harvests 5 to 6 years after planting.

Choose a site with full sun, moderately fertile soil, and good air circulation. Pears will do well in many different soils. Space trees, on OHx333 rootstock, 15 feet apart.

Pears do best with a small amount of fertilizer early in the year. Heavy doses of nitrogen will make the tree more vulnerable to fire blight.

Pear trees live for many years and with proper pruning and care, will give you an abundance of delicious fruit, year after year.

• Prune fruit trees, grapes, berries, and ornamental trees this month. Take in a pruning class and sharpen your shears before you start.

• Spray fruit trees with a dormant oil spray. Spray from the bottom up, including the undersides of limbs and the ground around the tree, to prevent early spring insect infestations.

• Tree collards are delicious winter vegetables. Set out plants now.

• Start seeds of perennial flowers like columbine, coreopsis and echinacea.

• FREE Fruit Tree Pruning Class this Sunday, January 25, from 10 AM to 2 PM at Sanhedrin Nursery, 1094 Locust St., Willits.

Growing Great Onions

Onions seem like they would be one of the easiest vegetables to grow, but raising good onions can be more complicated that it first appears. As vegetables they are interesting plants to grow because they are very dependent upon day length and temperature to form bulbs.

Onions are typically seeded in fall through early spring, harvested in early summer and used fresh or stored for winter. But as many experienced gardeners know, the crop is not always successful, and many times the bulbs produce flower heads, which is known as “bolting”.

To grow onions successfully, you must know a little about them. Onions are biennials, which means that they grow one year and makes flowers and seeds the second year. The first year the onion plant begins its growth by putting out its green top leaves in cool weather. It stores energy in those leaves until the weather gets warmer and the days get longer. Then it begins storing energy in the bulb underground. When the bulb is mature, the leaves turn yellow and die and the onion is ready to harvest.

Given a certain set of environmental conditions, onions can be tricked into believing they have gone through two growing cycles during their first year. Instead of finishing with a well-cured bulb, ready to harvest, a seed stalk can develop prematurely, causing onions to be unmarketable.

Fall seeded crops are susceptible to bolting the following spring if warm fall temperatures, allowing excessive growth, are followed by low winter temperatures and slowed growth. The most successful onions may come from transplants set out in early spring.

Occasionally other factors, such as damage by cultivation or excessive stress, may cause bolting. That’s why only a few plants may bolt in an entire plot. Should this occur, the onion will still be perfectly edible; however, as the seed-stem gets bigger, the ring inside the onion will become pithy and inedible. If left to maturity, this ring will rot quickly and cause the entire onion to rot as well. It’s best to eat the onion as soon as you see the seed-stem. Don’t bend or break the top; the leaf is hollow, and breaking it will allow water to go right into the center of the onion and cause it to rot.

Onion sets (the small dry bulbs) have a bad habit of bolting and producing a flower stem. It is actually better to plant first-year seedling onions. These come two ways: as nursery-grown seedlings in small pots, and in bunches of larger seedlings that have been grown in fields and dug-up. The latter are available now in a limited number of varieties, and the former will be available soon with other spring vegetable starts.

Onions are characterized by day length: “long-day” onion varieties will quit forming tops and begin to form bulbs when the day length reaches 14 to 16 hours while “short-day” onions will start making bulbs much earlier in the year when there are only 10 to 12 hours of daylight. As a general rule, “long-day” onions do better in north of 36 degrees latitude while “short-day” onions do better south of that line. Willits and Ukiah are at about 39 degrees.

Our long summer days make the intermediate to long-day onions good for our climate and latitude. These include Red Zeppelin, Walla Walla, and Copra, Ruby, Candy, the Southport Globe onions, and Yellow and White Sweet Spanish.

For keeping qualities, the strong-flavored, yellow ones, like Copra, Yellow Spanish and Yellow Globe are the best. The milder onions don’t develop the really firm outer skin needed for long storage.

Onions aren’t bothered by frost, so early spring is the best time to get them planted. Then they have plenty of time to store up energy in the leaves before bulb-making time. The more green growth, the bigger the bulbs will be. So get started with onions, now.